Is reflection of light from a smooth surface because of absorbtion and reemission of photons by surface matter? Or is it just wrong to ask this kind of a question because of wave and partical duality of light?
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No. Absorption and re-emission of photons are interactions which introduce incoherence and images would be spoiled.
Reflection in terms of photons is elastic scattering of photons, which keeps the phases between them, and with no energy loss, so colors are retained, and thus can transmit images.
The classical electromagnetic field is built up by the quantum electromagnetic field with creation and annihilation operators of photons in a complex superposition, as described here.
anna v
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How did my post not answer the question ? "Consider a infinite flat thin metallic mirror in the xy plane. Light travelling in the -z direction falls on it and makes the electrons move in counter phase. The field of the moving electrons forms a wave that travels in the +z direction, the reflected wave, and one in the -z direction which exactly cancels the incoming wave below the mirror (z<0)." – my2cts Apr 26 '18 at 19:58
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@my2cts photons and electrons are quantum mechanical entities, and absorption and reemission has to be adressed in a quantum mechanical framework. You are proposing a semiclassical model with no mathematical justification. hand waving . – anna v Apr 27 '18 at 03:33
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Reflection at a mirror does not require quantum mechanics. Fresnel solved it way before the advent of QM. – my2cts Apr 28 '18 at 09:49
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@my2cts Sure, all classical theories still work in their range of validity. But if one talks of photons or electrons, then one is in the quantum mechanical range. classiscal electromagnetiism emerges from the underlying quantum level, consistently. see https://motls.blogspot.gr/2011/11/how-classical-fields-particles-emerge.html – anna v Apr 28 '18 at 12:34